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June 18, 2005

What about Hardware?

I actually mostly agree with : Mark Fletcher's Blog: Stealth Start-Ups Suck, except for one caveat... His post is accurate concerning software startups, but with regards to hardware, I can think up some very good reasons for keeping mum.

I'm sure others will talk about this, but one thing I'd like to parrot from the post is that there is so much bogosity around the protecting 'ideas'. There is value in ideas, but the real value is when you can combine imaginagtion and execution. I happen to not value 'ideas' as highly as execution, but that's me.

1 comment:

I think the days where ideas are worth anything before execution are gone and I agree that keeping an idea too secret stymies overall development. Since I have been making my own handheld device and other various devices for geospatial data aquisition, I can totally agree with keeping your hardware idea a secret - except for when a complex technical problem is encountered. I don't know about you, but electrical engineering consultants are way too expensive for me to hire to help with a prototype and then beyond that there's the whole issue of intellectual rights. That's why I love being in a university setting - there are so many people eager to help out on a project such as the one I have been working on. You just have to describe the technical detail in enough detail to get help but as to not reveal your innovation or business strategy.